Virtualbox works fine for me. Though I only use it to run Windows XP so I'm probably not a demanding customer, but calling it garbage is kind of over-the top. It's very useful for me for running some windows-only software that refuses to work in Wine, and to test my sw on windows without having to reboot...
Virtualbox works fine for you (And me too, apparently). But it visibly does not for many, as vboxdrv makes things crash in such volume that it spams bug reporting databases enough for someone to be pissed out enough by that fact to put together a patch containing creative names. Also enough (yet probably not vbox specific but it sure masks vboxdrv data) that Debian, Suse and RHEL took proactive measures to flag all out of tree modules.
I agree, I run XP and Vista under Virtualbox for testing websites, plus Debian for when I want to guarantee a clean development environment. I've never had any problems, other than with some Windows games which can't detect the CD drive because they assume it will be at D:\
kvm, for one. Not quite as featureful, and the UI is a command line (though there's the virt manager stuff that I haven't tried). But it's rock solid virtualization that never gives me problems.
I think people are misunderstanding this thread. This is a kernel developers thread, where Dave Jones is complaining that virtualbox is the source of too much random corruption and arbitrary crashes in the kernel, and he's submitting a patch that "taints" the module such the presence of virtualbox gets flagged in kernel panics (and thus automated bug reports, etc..).
It's unstable software, and that taint is important information that prevents people from wasting effort chasing non-bugs in other components. No one is flaming about it vs. vmware or whatever, or telling you what to use.
>"No one is flaming about it vs. vmware or whatever, or telling you what to use."
Well saying virtualbox is garbage is pretty much flaming. It doesn't bother me but I imagine those working on virtualbox won't exactly be happy about it.
kvm is very high quality. When the SmartOS developers ported it to the OpenIndiana (or is it IllumOS? the naming is a joke) kernel, they found almost no bugs in kvm. Porting usually exposes bugs.
No it's not. It has its own set of problems. And bugs too! KVM has its pluses too, I agree, it's a VMM in kernel mode which apparently makes it faster, it is very non-intrusive to the rest of the kernel and hence got readily accepted upstream and so some might argue in that sense that it's better. But even though I have been hacking into KVM recently, for running a VM at home on my laptop/PC, I will always opt for VirtualBox for its simple ease of usage.
Can you give a few reasons from your own experience? I found it much, much easier to get Windows XP sound and USB passthrough working in virtualbox than in kvm.
